Archive for September 2007

Last night we had tickets to go see The Crystal Method at Ruby Skye with Amy and Rade; we were all really excited. Our night turned out to be much different than we had planned….

The tickets said the show started at 8:00, so we made reservations for 6:00 at a nearby restaurant (Ponzu – yum!). After a highly satisfying meal, we headed over to the club around 7:45. Jon's friend Andrei was waiting outside for us, and informed us that the doors wouldn't even open until 8:15 or so. This was starting to sound a bit like our trip to Ronnie Scott's in London, but since we knew the area, it was okay. We turned around and went to some random hotel bar for a drink. I discovered the vodka tonic, more refreshing and less sweet than my usual vodka cranberry. Not sure why I hadn't tried it before, but anyway….

At 8:30, we went back to the club. There were more people around, and someone was taking tickets and stamping wrists, so we went up to her and got into the lobby. Inside, it was crowded, and no one was moving anywhere. Initially we assumed the main doors just hadn't opened yet, but after a few minutes, something strange became apparent. The lobby was full of GIRLS. At least 5 of them were wearing those fake bachelorette veils. It turns out there were several groups there waiting for their various friends to show up. We got around them and went straight upstairs to the balcony.

After a few minutes of just standing at the balcony railing waiting (the upstairs bar wasn't open yet), the girls from the lobby began to come onto the dance floor. While I don't understand why they all decided to converge upon Ruby Skye last night, it was crazy to see. Prom-style circles of girls dancing around a pile of purses, one random fair-isle-sweatered dude dancing off by himself (clearly on some drug or another), and a pair of drag queens. From our vantage point, we could now count 6 separate bachelorette parties. As interesting of people watching as this was, it was pretty boring. The music was the ultra-generic BOOM BOOM BOOM techno that I have been avoiding since college. Amy did some reconnaissance to see about getting one of the reserved tables (all sold out), Andrei went out to find out when The Crystal Method would be onstage (not until MIDNIGHT, and it was only 9:00 at this point), then I went to find out whether we had in and out privileges (YES!). We left, and headed to Bourbon and Branch to burn a couple of hours.

The doorman who was guarding the entrance to the library (the part of the bar for which you don't need reservations) didn't want to let us in initially, but after talking to a couple of other people, we got in. The supposed party of 70 that was about to arrive, and the reason they didn't want to let us in, never came. Anyway – I picked up a round of drinks (another vodka tonic, yay!), Andrei invited a couple of friends to join us, and we found a small table to gather around. At this point I realized that the library actually had real books on the walls as decoration (duh). Amy and I would pick up books from the shelves in front of us, showing the more interesting points to the group. The cool thing was, these were OLD books, published from the 20s to the 50s. Bank management, social revolt, Lincoln, an encyclopedia of modern fiction…fun for perusing in between conversations (and for starting new ones).

We left at 11:00 to head back to the club, got in without incident, and went back upstairs. Within 15 minutes, we had wriggled our way back to the balcony railing. Unfortunately, the headliners, instead of playing their own music (or even remixes of their own music), were just having a guest DJ set. Worse, they were playing more of the BOOM BOOM BOOM crap. For some reason, there was a group of about 15 people, friends of CM or something, just standing like idiots at the back of the stage. The only redeeming point of the show that I found was their partnering with a group called Trapeze World. One or two girls would come out at a time and do incredible acrobatic tricks on ropes or hoops suspended from the ceiling. After seeing three of those cool acts and sitting through the in-between numbing rhythms (by this time it was about 1:30), we decided to call it a night. Thank god we didn't take BART.

Oh, and somewhere in there, I completely lost my voice. Jon is having no end of fun teasing me about it today 🙂

I'm cleaning up my cube today. Not cleaning it out, just getting old code printouts and notes shredded, putting things where they ought to be, in general getting a bit more organized. I'll try to get rid of a little bit of my flair as well. I figure if I'm telling people I am good at organizing things and that they should hire me as a Producer, maybe I ought to act a bit like one 🙂 That, and there's not much else to do at this stage in the project.

On the crafty side, I finally figured out how to do fair isle colorwork. I'm working on a killer sweater from the Fall Knitscene magazine. The colors are turning out a bit more Christmas-like than I had planned (red and green will do that to ya), but it is still beautiful, even if it will only be worn for the month of December.

Update on the last (Labor Day, new habits) post: picking up new habits is significantly easier than ditching old ones. In 19 days since I started on my new plan, I have missed my wakeup workout just 4 times. Two of those were Sundays, and two of them were from sleeping in. Not bad! I am giving myself one day off for free each week anyway, so I really just missed two. The eating habit changes have been much more difficult to stick to. I blame this primarily on work, where there is nothing to do, so everyone wants to go on these great two-hour lunches everyday. I want to fit in, so I go along. My weakness has been in not paying attention to what I order or how much I eat once I get out on these lunches. I want to indulge in this slow work period so much, I just let it go, telling myself I will shape up my diet once the project is really over.

I ran across a flickr set of the most beautiful bento box lunches the other day; this may be my salvation. I can't spend the time making these crazy works of art, but the concept of the artfully prepared, healthy lunch is making me want to start bringing my food in. Again, maybe once the project is over….and it will have to be done without spending too much extra money, otherwise I'd be forfeiting my financial goals as well.

I took this year's Labor Day as a personal rebirth (get it? Labor Day?!). As happens with so many people, after moving in with The Boy, certain things have fallen by the wayside. I can't quite figure out where it happened, but I gained back the weight I had lost before the move, and keeping up on the housekeeping and cooking has become more cumbersome than I wanted it to be. I took the weekend to straighten my head out and get back on track.

As far as the weight gain goes, it makes sense to start at the point where I had initially lost weight. I had picked up a book from Borders called French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure. It was fantastic. The author teaches you how to really appreciate food, emphasizing quality over quantity and cooking for the seasons. I backed off from going to the gym as much (went from four classes a week to two), and happily lost 8 pounds by just paying attention and enjoying my meals.

Somewhere in there, over time, I fell back into my old habits of eating whatever looked tasty when I was out to lunch. I fell to the indirect pressure of watching my coworkers indulge in cheeseburgers and french fries. Dinners were still healthy (yay for home cooking!), but my portions fell out of whack. I felt compelled to keep eating as long as Jon was eating, regardless of how full I actually was. As for exercise, I did get back into spinning and took up yoga, but I still felt gross, and the scale agreed.

Saturday morning when Jon was in the shower (and on a normal day I would have stayed in bed until he was done), I got up and started doing some core exercises. Not a full workout in any sense, but it still got me going for the day. Some abs, push-ups, and back work in the morning seems doable. It will keep my head in the right space, thinking about improving the state of my body without punishing it. I've finished this set every day since, making it four days in a row. They say it takes one month to make a habit out of anything; we'll see 🙂

On the food side, I re-read the first half of the book. It reminded me what I need to pay attention to, and got me re-inspired to really appreciate the food I eat while it blesses my body. The trick here will be making sure the meals I cook are still enough to satisfy The Boy.

I'm still working on how to get more energy to maintain the house. It seems to really come in fits and spurts. I have my little GTD setup in the kitchen, I just need to pay attention to it some more (is there a recurring theme here?). I think I'll take a page from the FlyLady book and do this 15 minutes at a time.